In 1939 London was not merely the greatest city in the world it was the most tempting and
vulnerable target for aerial attack. For six years it was the frontline of the free world's
battle against Fascism. It endured the horrors of the Blitz of 1940 and 1941 the V1s the V2s.
Other cities suffered more intensely no other city was so constantly under attack for so long
a time. This is the story of London at war - or perhaps of Londoners at war for Philip
Ziegler known best as a biographer is above all fascinated by the people who found their
lives so suddenly and violently transformed: the querulous tiresome yet strangely gallant
housewife from West Hampstead the turbulent left-wing retired schoolmaster from Walthamstow
always having a go at the authorities the odiously snobbish middleclass lady from Kensington
sneering at the scum who took shelter in the Underground the typist from Fulham the plumber
from Woolwich. It was their war quite as much as it was Churchill's or the King's and this is
their history. Through a wealth of interviews and unpublished letters and diaries as well as
innumerable books and newspapers the author has built up a vivid picture of a population under
siege. There were cowards there were criminals there were incompetents but what emerges from
these pages is above all a record of astonishing patience dignity and courage. 'I hope '
Ziegler writes 'we will never have to endure again what they went through between 1939 and
1945. I hope if we did that we would conduct ourselves as well.'
